Just Following People Whom I Love

blackamazon:

anoldladyonfire:

vegtablez:

“You don’t come back in here until you’ve apologized to every person in this room, Because you just exercised a freedom that none of these people of color have. When these people of color get tired of racism, they can’t just walk out, because there’s no place in this country where they aren’t going to be exposed to racism. They can’t even stay in their own homes and not be exposed to racism if they turn on their television. But you, as a white female, when you get tired of being judged and treated unfairly on the basis of your eye color, you can walk out that door, and you know it won’t happen out there. You exercised a freedom they don’t have. If you’re going to be in here you’re going to apologize to every person of color in this room. And do it now.”

“I’m sorry there’s racism in this country—

“BULLSHIT! No, you’re not going to say ‘I’m sorry there’s racism.’ You’re going to apologize for what YOU just did.”

“I will not apologize because it’s not a matter of race always—”

“OUT.”

Jane Elliot is a champ.

mangosupasonic:

This is quite painful for me to watch, because I can see that girl’s world or her beliefs get uprooted.

themindislimitless:

You can’t just say to a person you don’t see them as they are, you’re taking all the things they’ve gone through and saying, it doesn’t matter, I don’t care. I’m going to pretend you don’t go through these problems. It’s extremely rude. It’s extremely prejudiced. It’s white privilege.

lyraattack:

No, I’m sorry, that is NOT white privilege. Well, what you wrote is. But not that girl’s behavior.

I have to agree with that girl. Persecution is not always about race, and judging from her reactions, she strikes me as the kind of girl who has experienced persecution herself, for other reasons. She’s plain, she’s eager to discuss, she leaves her hand up and she carefully considers her words. She’s a rock one moment and a wreck the next. She reminds me of myself. 

And for that reason, I have little doubt that this isn’t the first time she’s run from a classroom in tears. I have little doubt that she feels ashamed of her tears, I have little doubt that the reason she left was because she felt she was committing some grave offense by crying in front of others. I believe this, because I’ve been there. I’ve been driven there by classmates. If I’ve ever been driven to tears by a teacher in class, I can’t remember (though I won’t rule it out). 

But someone of her type? Of my type? For a teacher, to her a figure of trust and respect, to bring her to that vulnerable place, that place she hides so well — and you know she does. You saw how her face was steel one moment and so terrified the next — is the worst kind of betrayal. 

So when she came back in, she sat in the corner. She couldn’t rejoin the exercise. She had messed up. She had ruined it. She had failed. She was ashamed and hurt and scared to face her classmates now that they’d seen her ‘real’ face, how weak she was. So why was this trusted figure rubbing her shame in her face, she probably asked herself.

It wouldn’t have occurred to her to apologize to her classmates for removing her tears from the room. That would have seemed the only proper thing to do. When you can’t take it anymore, you take your tears to the bathroom so you don’t make anyone else uncomfortable with them. That’s what you do. That’s what she’s used to doing. She would have felt she owed Ms. Elliot an apology, but she would have felt that, at that moment, her feelings of hurt and betrayal would make such an apology fake, resentful, worse than nothing. 

So, faced with confirmation from all her classmates that she was a horrible person, seeing the blank, staring eyes of the classmates she had tried to defend with the best of intentions, the only thing she could do was get her jacket and leave. Obviously they didn’t want her there anymore, after she messed up. After all, no-one ever wants her. She knows that. 

That was not the face of white privilege. That was just a hurt young girl, a girl with a history of being bullied and belittled and disregarded, being pushed down once again. A person who is so aware of injustice that it aches, constantly, that the only way she can handle it is by pretending the hurt it causes doesn’t exist, by pretending that she’s strong. And also the face of white guilt, but that’s not the important part.

Let me say, here, that I absolutely agree with Ms. Elliot’s motives, with her lesson. The quote in the first post, above, is fantastic. And poignant. And true. But right now I can only find her despicable. Because she is crusading to stop one kind of persecution — the kind that affects whole communities, who can at least rely on one another for support — But she seems totally ignorant of another kind, the kind that targets individuals. That one child who stands out from their peers because they’re a bit smarter, or a bit quieter, or a bit worse at social situations, or a bit closer to the teacher than the other students. And I want you to look in the eye of someone who went through that kind of separation, the kind that left them without anyone their age to rely on and, in too many schools, no adults either, and tell them it doesn’t matter. 

Because whether they’ll ever admit it or not, I promise you the wounds inflicted by that situation never, ever heal.

And then tell me that this session doesn’t almost seem designed to take advantage of that person. That person who has been ostracized, been belittled, gotten used to beating back problems with their brain and their stoicism. Because that’s always the person who raises their hand. That’s always the person who tries to speak intelligently. That’s always the person who defends the others even when they know, intellectually, they’d be safer keeping quiet. And that’s always the person who is driven to tears when they realize they can’t help.

I’m sorry

Ican’t-

Because it’s NOT about race always. If you know nothing else, you KNOW that humans always find some way to make some people worth less. And if you beat back one kind of discrimination while inadvertently furthering another— 

She just.

I did not see an educator and crusader for racial equality. I saw a bully. Because that girl was not the one who needed the lesson on race. That girl was the one who fights for others and for herself without a second thought, because she honestly feels that she is worth less than the people around her, even though she knows, intellectually, that she’s a good person. And I saw her get crushed down under an educator’s heel for the sake of making a point about something SHE HAS EXPERIENCED, when what she really needs is a good therapist. 

And I cannot forgive that. 

And if I’m wrong about her entirely, and she does indulge in all sorts of white privilege and no-one has given her an unkind word in her life and she’s the most popular girl in her class?

It doesn’t matter. Because the fragile girl I described above is me. And if I were in that classroom, I would be the one trying to speak up, the one trying to stand up for herself and her classmates and her validity. I would be the one who would have to run from the room to avoid showing others my tears, who would be too ashamed myself, upon returning, to bring myself to apologize. 

And if just watching this video is enough to  - to trigger horrible memories and feelings in someone who has suffered exclusion and discrimination, if it’s enough to trigger tears and shakes and page long soul-baring — I am crying while I type, right now — then you are DOING something WRONG. 

I believe that race is the most important type of persecution — that it’s the most widespread, the most harmful, the one that should most urgently be stopped. 

BUT IT IS NOT THE ONLY KIND OF PERSECUTION. 

And SHE needs to GODDAMN REALIZE THAT before she HURTS MORE YOUNG GIRLS.

dkla

okay.

that’s all I got

I hate this video

notanimp:

You are projecting really hardcore. That girl, unlike every POC ever, could opt out of being included in this exercise. There’s absolutely nothing to indicate she was bullied.

This video IS about race. That is what it is about. You don’t get to erase that to make the video about you. If you glom on to a white girl crying instead of taking away the larger lesson about how it is to be a POC and to be attacked on a daily basis, then you need to reevaluate your priorities and consider your own privilege.

pastimperfection:

Holy shit, this could be the worst of the lot.  This is actually more egotistical than those people who smugly insist that if they had been German citizens under the Nazis, they would have been such righteous gentiles that they would have been cramming terrorized Jews into every crevice in the house.  This woman is not merely adamant that she would have demonstrated no racism.  She is actually insisting that it is offensive to her to say bad things about actual racists, because if she herself had been there, she would not really have been racist, and so insulting them is being unfair to her. 

I have no doubt that every single white student in that video who, again, signed a waiver prior to their ENTIRELY VOLUNTARY PARTICIPATION, felt exactly as lyraattack: Not them. They would never.

Well?

As the black girl who has been on the end of that from that girl who has HAD IT SO HARD

I say with no reservations fuck you. 

I have to think people like lyraattack haven’t seen the whole video. first, this is primarily an exercise in which she focuses on race. Yes, she acknowledges other ways in which people are marginalized, but this exercise, since she began doing it 40 years ago, has been primarily about race. Never has she said that race/racism is “the only kind of persecution,” but it has been her focus.

secondly, i say i hope people who are soooo sympathetic for the young white woman with the headscarf and the young white woman with the eyebrow piercing and the other “blue-eyes” in the video haven’t seen the whole thing, because the lack of empathy expressed for the young Latina who points out that we go through this everyday and for the young black woman who echoes that sentiment? Even when Elliott underlines the fact that we don’t get to walk away? that’s definitely the privileging of whiteness.

I just showed this film in my Construction of Race class and had my students work through some of that: question who they sympathized with the most and why and think through their assertions. Particularly, some of them thought one of the blue-eyed students was right; Elliott fights fire with fire and that is counterproductive (hello, tone argument). Another said, “She makes it seem like a person of color is the worst thing to be and it is not always,” which I take as a horrible re-stating of lyraattack’s premise. Yet, not one of them said a word when a Latina student in our class commented that she had experienced that kind of atmosphere for as long as she could remember and it had beat her down, made her timid and scared to try because she had internalized that she couldn’t, she shouldn’t. **crickets** on that.

karnythia:

vegtablez:

“You don’t come back in here until you’ve apologized to every person in this room, Because you just exercised a freedom that none of these people of color have. When these people of color get tired of racism, they can’t just walk out, because there’s no place in this country where they aren’t going to be exposed to racism. They can’t even stay in their own homes and not be exposed to racism if they turn on their television. But you, as a white female, when you get tired of being judged and treated unfairly on the basis of your eye color, you can walk out that door, and you know it won’t happen out there. You exercised a freedom they don’t have. If you’re going to be in here you’re going to apologize to every person of color in this room. And do it now.”

“I’m sorry there’s racism in this country—

“BULLSHIT! No, you’re not going to say ‘I’m sorry there’s racism.’ You’re going to apologize for what YOU just did.”

“I will not apologize because it’s not a matter of race always—”

“OUT.”

Jane Elliot is a champ.

I find it fascinating how much some of the white people in the room resisted the idea that racism could hurt POC just for existing & being of color.